Thursday, May 20, 2010

Twitter tips and tricks

Webbmedia Group has an excellent Twitter tip sheet that goes over some Twitter basics and outlines some tools to consider.

Twitter is a lot more than just Twitter.com. Through its powerful API, there are a whole host of Twitter clients like Twhirl and Twitterrific (also a mobile client) and add-ons that extend the usefulness of Twitter far beyond 140-character messages.

Many people prefer using these clients to Twitter.com, and they can be a handy way to monitor multiple accounts at once. Clients like Tweetdeck make it easy to stay on top of trends (and it’s a pretty good client for sending out tweets).

There are also several fantastic mobile clients for Twitter as well (I use TwitterFon on my iPhone). I even have an iPhone app dedicated to just monitoring keyword terms like beat blogging and beatblogging (not the same term).

For journalists, the ability to search Twitter is huge. Any journalist on Twitter should bookmark search.twitter.com. You can use this service to grab an RSS feed of terms you want to follow (earlier this week Etan Horowitz talked about the power of this).

Here are some of the key areas Webbmedia’s tip sheet goes over:

* Basics — If you’re new to Twitter, this tip sheet explains some terms and symbols that may perplex you, like # hashtags and why people use @ all the time. * Utilities — There are many Twitter utilities that extend the capabilities of Twitter, like the ability to post your tweets on a blog or to Facebook. * Clients — Some people like using Twitter.com, while others swear by one of the many clients available for Twitter. It’s all personal choice. Many of the clients are free too. The only downside is that there is a limit to how often you can get updates on a client. * Trends and analysis — You’ll be amazed at what kinds of trends you can spot with Twitter, from the most popular words and topics to the most posted URLs. * Search — There is more than just the official search.twitter.com. Different search engines have different focuses and different strengths. * People relationship management — One of the best tools when you get started on Twitter is Twubble. It will help you find people to follow. The key to success on Twitter is building a good network.